Finished! Bubinga Fretless Bass Build

Andyjr1515

In parallel with the Walnut EVH re-body I'm on with, I've started something I promised myself a long time ago...to make another bass, similar to the Thumb tribute I did for our band's bassist in construction, but coming away sufficiently from the Warwick shapes to make sure I was well clear of contravening any registered designs.

The purpose it two-fold:  

First is that I occasionally get to play the tribute and I LOVE IT.  It's the dinky size but sheer gravitas from the weight of the wood.  So this build is for me

Second is that, based on the tribute, I've been asked a couple of times if I would make another one.  Well, making a tribute for a mate is one thing, but making ones specifically to sell is quite another.  Hence, make something with the same 'feel' but something that is tangibly and obviously different.

The proportions will be similar, but the body different:

The woods were going to be the same as the tribute - bubinga body and amazaque/ovangkol neck...but more of that anon

Kirk at exotichardwoodsukltd.co.uk sorted me out with a lovely piece of figured bubinga.

 I joined the two halves, band-sawed the rough shape and finished off with a bearing router bit round a MDF template:

The construction is going to be once again my slightly unconventional 'slotted body with through-neck'.  I duly slotted the body, again with the router:

...and then turned my attention to the neck...of which more anon

TTony

watching.

mart

Wow! I loved your tribute, and this looks even better. I play a thumb myself, but I'm almost tempted to upgrade to an Andyjr instead!

Your "slotted body with through neck" looks like the real deal - the construction that Warwicks look like they have, until you look closely and see that theyactually just cut a separate of body wood to go in front of the neck through.

Andyjr1515

mart said:

Your "slotted body with through neck" looks like the real deal - the construction that Warwicks look like they have, until you look closely and see that theyactually just cut a separate of body wood to go in front of the neck through.

Yes - and I'm emphatically not good enough to do it like that  )

equalsql

I am subscribed

Sassafras

Lovely piece of wood. How thick is the body?

Andyjr1515

Sassafras said:

Lovely piece of wood. How thick is the body?

It's starting off at 2" but will have a curved carve similar to the Warwicks.  This is the end-on view of the Thumb:

I'll be aiming for an actual body depth of around 1.5"

Andyjr1515

So....to the neck

The tribute I built was a 5 piece laminate of Amazaque (Ovangkol) and Mahogany.  For this one I was originally going to go for two thick Amazaque splices and a slim wenge centre splice.

Trouble is, after I'd planed the pieces and glued them together, I noticed this:

Luckily, no harm done because it wasn't yet glued in the body!

I looked at another piece of Amazaque I'd stored properly and that was bent like a banana 

Anyone else had issues using Amazaque / Ovangkol?

Anyway, not worth the risk so I've changed tack and gone for mahogany with the wenge centre.  Rang David Dyke up on Wed to pass on my card details and it was with me yesterday...one day later!  Fantastic stuff too.

I use the centre splice to create the truss rod slot (they are both 6mm!) and will have a hidden scarfe joint for the wenge only.  Here's the cut splice being glued to the one side:

...and then the other side glued and clamped:

...and here's the ready-made truss-rod slot:

Next job, slimming the neck down to fit the routed slot in the body 

Andyjr1515

So the reason I first started slotting the body for a through-neck rather than adding 'wings' was basically equipment but mostly capability 

I still find it immensely challenging to get a square straight edge and don't have the luxury of a router table or proper work bench to be able to set up a shooting board for a jack plane.  On the other hand, routers...while being scary... cut at 90 degrees and are relatively easy to arrange with straight edges, guides, etc..  I also realised that, if you want an unbroken look for a solid-bodied guitar or bass top, it was a darn sight easier that the method that, say, Warwick employ that @mart describes where they add a third section, matched in grain and a perfect fit on both sides...that's FOUR MORE faces that would have to be straight, square and perfectly sized @-)

So, having routed out my slot, I just needed the neck to be the same size and square (at least for the two sides).  Start with a lovely square and straight datum supplied by David Dyke 

Then introduce the one major luxury tool I have bought in the past 12 months - the Makita 2012nb thicknesser:

I agonised for months over buying this but best c£400 I have spent for a long time  .  One of the things you never read from the reviews is actually how fine a cut you can make...they just talk about the maximum rate of wood removal.

The neck blank was about 12mm too wide.  I thinned it 1mm at a time, nice and modest, alternating sides to keep the centre strip central.

When it was pretty close, I took off 0.25mm (yes - a quarter of a mill off a 1.2m plank!) off each side...and just look at this:

 

...as the Mastercard ad goes... "big stupid grin on Andyjr1515's ugly mug......priceless!"

Now a work of caution - it is a thicknesser and not a planer-thicknesser (which I don't have room for) so banana in - banana out, but with one decent face to start off with, brilliant.  Perfect surface finish too.  As the neck slides in, you can actually feel the air coming out of the slot at the end 

From the top:

So that brings me up to date as of yesterday.

Next job is to set the position and height of the bridge - then I can determine the angle and position of the neck and cut the dog-leg slot in the body area of the neck that will raise the neck to body-top height.

As always, thanks for looking and for the encouraging feedback   

Andy

mart

Andyjr1515 said:

So the reason I first started slotting the body for a through-neck rather than adding 'wings' was basically equipment but mostly capability 

I still find it immensely challenging to get a square straight edge and don't have the luxury of a router table or proper work bench to be able to set up a shooting board for a jack plane.  On the other hand, routers...while being scary... cut at 90 degrees and are relatively easy to arrange with straight edges, guides, etc..  I also realised that, if you want an unbroken look for a solid-bodied guitar or bass top, it was a darn sight easier that the method that, say, Warwick employ that @mart describes where they add a third section, matched in grain and a perfect fit on both sides...that's FOUR MORE faces that would have to be straight, square and perfectly sized @-)

....

Wow! I wasn't sure if you were joking before, because I always assumed Warwick did it their way for ease of construction.

But now I see your point. In any case I think it'll look better and, presumably, be slightly more solid than the Warwick construction. 

Incidentally, your end-on photo of a thumb is obviously a bolt-on, not neck-through. If it were an NT you'd see the contrasting neck wood right down at the bottom. I should take a pic of mine to show the contrast. 

Oh, and will your design have any less neck-dive than the original? That's the only thing I don't love about the thumb design.

Andyjr1515

mart said:

Andyjr1515 said:

So the reason I first started slotting the body for a through-neck rather than adding 'wings' was basically equipment but mostly capability 

I still find it immensely challenging to get a square straight edge and don't have the luxury of a router table or proper work bench to be able to set up a shooting board for a jack plane.  On the other hand, routers...while being scary... cut at 90 degrees and are relatively easy to arrange with straight edges, guides, etc..  I also realised that, if you want an unbroken look for a solid-bodied guitar or bass top, it was a darn sight easier that the method that, say, Warwick employ that @mart describes where they add a third section, matched in grain and a perfect fit on both sides...that's FOUR MORE faces that would have to be straight, square and perfectly sized @-)

....

Wow! I wasn't sure if you were joking before, because I always assumed Warwick did it their way for ease of construction.

But now I see your point. In any case I think it'll look better and, presumably, be slightly more solid than the Warwick construction. 

Incidentally, your end-on photo of a thumb is obviously a bolt-on, not neck-through. If it were an NT you'd see the contrasting neck wood right down at the bottom. I should take a pic of mine to show the contrast. 

Oh, and will your design have any less neck-dive than the original? That's the only thing I don't love about the thumb design.

Hi @mart

Yes the end on was the only shot of the curve I could find.  As you say, the through neck shows at the tail.

Ref the neck dive, my tribute balances fine, but I think because I left the body a little thicker and therefore heavier than an actual Thumb.  May well do the same with this - I think I would favour weight over balance  

Deadman

Amazing as ever Andy. I love it so far.

BigMonka

This is going to be such a beauty when it's done Andy, and a real credit to your craftsmanship.

I may have asked this before but did you have a background in joinery before you started luthiering?

Andyjr1515

Deadman said:

Amazing as ever Andy. I love it so far.

Thanks @Deadman ;

Andyjr1515

BigMonka said:

This is going to be such a beauty when it's done Andy, and a real credit to your craftsmanship.

I may have asked this before but did you have a background in joinery before you started luthiering?

Flattery will, of course, get you everywhere @BigMonka ; ....but no, I'd never done any woodwork at all before starting modding my guitars a few years ago.  The initial drive was to be able to get replacement pickups and hardware to fit in my own guitars, but it's grown from there into a real interest and source of satisfaction.   

Always wanted to do woodwork or metalwork, but they didn't either at my school and there were always too many other things to take up my time in most of my adult years.  I did some R/C aircraft when I was younger but that's scalpel stuff.  Only learnt how to sharpen a chisel and plane in the last 12 months.  It's probably why I get such a kick out of carve jobs nowadays... 

...it's also probably why some of my methods are a bit weird...   )

impmann

Regarding chisel sharpening - and plane sharpening/use - would you be prepared to write a How To for these pages? I think it would be useful to a LOT of people. It's something I still struggle with, tbh.

Andyjr1515

impmann said:

Regarding chisel sharpening - and plane sharpening/use - would you be prepared to write a How To for these pages? I think it would be useful to a LOT of people. It's something I still struggle with, tbh.

I'm no expert at all, but I can pop down some of the things that seemed to make the difference.  I'll pop a post on tomorrow 

Andyjr1515

Started on the bridge and tailstop routing so I can determine the angle and position of the neck.

I'm using Warwick hardware which is set into the body, so both needed chambers routing. Although you see a Dremel here, I used predominately my little Bosch trimmer router - bubinga is very hard and the Dremel kicks too often to be used for the main rout - even for most of the trimming...I just use it for the tight radius corners.

Because this build is for my own use, I took a risk and freehanded it. For people I build for, I always cut a template and use a bearing router-bit. Although clearly I ignore my own advice, I wouldn't recommend doing it freehand - again, one kick and suddenly you have a slot where you didn't want one  

As it happens, I got away with it. Here's the tailstop slot:

...and then the height-adjustable bridge:

...and here they are snugly in place

 

Next job, sorting the neck angle and cutting the angled dogleg in the neck, but that might have to wait until I've done a bit more on the walnut EVH body  

Andyjr1515

The walnut rebody of the Peavey EVH is at a temporary halt while I try to work out how the hell to bend wood binding round an impossibly tight radius, so I was able to spend a couple of hours on the fretless this morning.

I worked out that a neck angle of around 2 degrees was all that would be needed to get the correct action range. All I do, with this build method, is incorporate the angle in the dog-leg notch of the neck. Rather than having to set up routing rig, I just band-sawed it and planed/sanded the top face flat and level:



Next was to create a cut-out in the bubinga for an overlap of the neck joint. This feature is a good example of learning by your previous mistakes  . On the tribute, I slotted the neck up to the body /neck joint line. The result would have been a catastrophic thinning of the neck at the join for which I had to compensate with a very inelegant heel. NOT going to do THAT again  

Here's the extra cutout:

...which gives a decent amount of overlap so I can carve the heel properly where there is still a full depth of mahogany. Slotted in, it looks like this:

Remember that the proportions are the same as a Thumb. The shot above gives a good perspective of just how tiny the body is and how proportionately long the neck is.

From the back, it looks like this:

Now I've got these major datum points fixed (after a bit of fettling to close up any gaps and routing of the pickup chambers while the top's still flat), I can slim the neck down and start the body carve.

Thanks for looking 

Andy 

BigMonka

Let me know if you start teaching luthier classes, as that's looking fantastic. I don't know much about basses and I've never seen a thumb, but I love the way you can see the next sticking out the bridge end, especially with the dark wood stripe 

TTony

BigMonka said:

Let me know if you start teaching luthier classes, as that's looking fantastic. I don't know much about basses and I've never seen a thumb, but I love the way you can see the next sticking out the bridge end, especially with the dark wood stripe 

I don't want to undermine Andy's yet-to-be-established business, nor take the bread out of the mouths of those who depend upon him ... but if you've got any interest in the guitar building process, Mark Bailey's new on-line course is available at a ridiculous discount, only available to theFB members, until next Saturday.

Just a thought